SELF GROWTH: EVOLVE YOUR LIFE
Strengthen Your Emotional Fitness
“Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” Tao Te Ching
Are you taking good care of yourself? If you are that is great. I remember a few years ago asking myself that question.
My first answer was that of course I was taking good care of myself. When I went deeper inside I had to admit to myself that there indeed were things that I wanted to change. The main ones were that I kept talking about exercising yet was not making time for it and I was not happy with where we were living since I really wanted to live in a waterfront community. I had to admit to myself that I was full of excuses and unwilling to take the action to make the changes I said I wanted. It was my emotional fitness that needed strengthening.
We are all aware how important it is to be physically fit. There is so much written about the value of getting exercise and eating nutritiously that this message has become part of our fiber. By taking responsibility to become physically fit we know that the result is a healthier happier life. We may not all take physical care of our bodies but we know how important it is.
Emotional fitness is taking responsibility for managing our emotions and behavior so that we do not settle for less than we deserve. Maureen Dodd a syndicated columnist once wrote: “The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. I think many people settle for less than they deserve. I was certainly one of them.
Without conscious awareness we short change ourselves with limiting self talk. It is what we say to ourselves that ends up restricting WHO we are capable of being and what we are capable of having in life.
By raising our self-awareness we will grow into WHO we are meant to be. Take an honest assessment of your life. Ask yourself what makes you happy and what would you like to change. We are meant to keep growing throughout life by taking responsibility for creating our own happiness.
We carry within us all that we learned growing up. We want to keep what was good and change what limits us. If we were raised with a lot of negativity we have the opportunity as adults to redefine who we are. If we were raised with rules that unduly restricted our sense of self we can learn to be authentically ourselves. Those of us who grew up with boundaries that were too loose can learn to set appropriate limits based on our values. When we learn to do that we are strengthening our emotional fitness.
Self-growth is the result of taking responsibility to define for ourselves who we are and then taking action to grow into what we want for ourselves.
Here are three concepts which are the foundation for emotional fitness.
1. How we deal with our emotions is learned
We have learned how to deal with our feelings in the families we grew up in and in the culture we were raised.
2. We can make changes throughout life
As children we learned to cope, grow, and survive. As adults we can unlearn the coping methods that are not helpful and learn new ones which serve us better.
3. We grow through self-mastery
When we know deep inside us that we are capable of being more than we are we can learn to bring forth our essence. By strengthening our emotional fitness the benefits are
• Feeling alive, energized and open to new possibilities
• Being in control of our life
• Expecting things to work out
• Trusting that we can create our future
Are you settling for less than you deserve?
Studies show that most of us are only using a third of what we are capable of. I don’t know how that statistic was arrived at. I love it because it gives such promise to our lives. It validates that by taking responsibility to grow in our emotional fitness we can truly continue to evolve to be who we are capable of being.
To grow in emotional fitness is a learning process. We know now that our brain keeps on growing throughout life and will need to be stimulated. To evolve as a person takes a willingness to grow in self awareness to find solutions for changing limiting beliefs and behaviors.
